Mystic Monologue

Follow me…follow me…follow me…

Hello?

Follow me…follow me…follow me…

Hello?  Who is this?

Do you hear me?  Are you listening?

Yes, I can hear, although it sounds like we have a bad connection… I can barely hear you.

There’s nothing wrong with the connection; you’re just learning how to listen.

Who are you?

I am your soul.

My soul?

Yes.  Do you hear me?

Yes, I guess so.

Follow me.

Where?

If you believed that I am real, you would not need to ask where.  Do you not believe that I am?

I…I don’t know.  I mean, I think I’ve always believed in the idea of having a soul…

You think.  Ideas.  Yes, you have many ideas, don’t you?  But not many beliefs.  Isn’t that so?

I suppose that’s true… Is that a bad thing?

That depends on the beliefs.  

Well, doesn’t the very fact that we’re having this conversation tell you that, on some level, I must believe that I have a soul? 

That is a very smart answer, which is not the same as a good one.  I don’t know, does it tell you that?

I guess so. 

Follow me.

But why now?  After all these years, why, all of a sudden, are you speaking to me now?

Well, that seems rather self-evident, doesn’t it?  Because you are listening, of course.

So, I had to start listening before you would speak to me?  Isn’t that kind of backwards?  Wouldn’t it have been better for you to speak first, so that I knew there was something to listen to?

I was speaking; you weren’t listening.

So you’ve been speaking to me all along?

Always and forever.

And I just wasn’t hearing it?

Or listening.

So what happened?  What changed that now I can suddenly hear you, or listen to you, or whatever it is that I’m doing?

Haboobed!

Every summer residents of the Valley experience a signature feature of life in the desert in the form of massive dust storms.  For those who don’t live here, you might have seen video of them on the national news.  Those giant brown clouds you’ve seen consuming an entire metropolitan area of four million people?  That’s us.  For some reason, we’ve had a few doozies in the last year or so that have even made the old-old-timers sit up and say, “Now that one there reminds me of Oklahoma.  1932, I think it was, or was it ’33?  Either way, it was that one where we lost half our roof, Davy Crockett our Basset hound, and our front yard.” 

So where do these enormous rolling walls of dirt and sand come from?  Well, I’m no scientist, but being a child of the 70’s, I like to use the analogy of thermonuclear war whenever I can.   You know how, when an atomic bomb goes off, it makes a mushroom cloud in the sky?  Well, imagine a reverse atomic bomb, one that starts in the sky and goes down.  A dust storm is basically a mushroom cloud created by a 10 megaton thunderstorm after it collapses out in the desert.  The nice part is, instead of radiation poisoning, we just get Valley Fever. 

Until recently, these living signs of the biblical apocalypse never really had a name of their own. We just called them dust storms; and frankly, that term just doesn’t capture the peculiar grandeur and immensity of a good, 500-foot high, solid wall of blowing dirt and sand.   Other flexings of nature’s prodigious muscles, such as hurricanes and tornados, have been assigned names that seem to epitomize their strength and terrible power.   A dust storm just kind of sounds like something that happens when your grandmother cleans.  It makes it kind of hard to be taken seriously by someone from Kansas, let’s say, when you attempt to communicate the ferocity of a dust storm. 

Arizonan:  Man, you should have seen the dust storm I got caught in on my way home the other day!  It was unbelievable.  It was like driving into a wall.  Couldn’t see a thing…     

Kansan:  Sounds scary.  Did this ‘dust storm’ pick your car up in the air, twirl it around like a hyperactive schoolgirl’s baton, and then drop you upside-down in an oak tree three miles away?

Arizonan:  Well, no.  But I had to pull over and wait for it to stop.

Kansan:  And you lived to tell about it?  Amazing.

Dark Tower: Roland Lives!

The following is dedicated to Roland Deschain.  May your quest bring you peace, gunslinger.

A number of strange things have been happening to me over the last several weeks, all of them connected in some way to the Dark Tower series of books by Stephen King.  This happens sometimes when I immerse myself too long into someone else’s world; I tend to fall under the influence of its gravitational pull until I am orbiting around it like a trapped satellite.  And this is such a long series of books, many thousands of pages.  It has taken me the better part of a year to read them, which has both prolonged the effect, and made it more pronounced.

At least this is the reason I am giving myself for the strange recent occurrences.   I have been tarrying too long in sai King’s world, I explain to myself; that’s all it is.  All I need to do is finish the last book, and then allow time and distance to break the magic spell of gravity, and free me from its hold.    

But, for the time being anyway, the character of Roland Deschain, the gunslinger, has besieged my mind and infiltrated my imagination.  These things I’m about to relate have more to do with him than anything, I suspect.  The character whose quest for the Dark Tower is documented in these books is so vividly drawn, so profoundly flawed and yet so powerful, that I have found it hard not to believe in him.  This, of course, is reason enough to finish the last book as quickly as possible, and then wait patiently to try and reclaim my rightful place in reality.   

Before I can do that, though, there is some painting and some tiling that must get done; yes there is...but now I’m putting the cart in front of the horse.

The first notably odd incident was last month.  It was a sleep-in day for me, so it was seven by the time I rolled out of bed.  I was the last one to wake up, and I could hear the television in the back room as I slumped down the hallway.  For once, our black lab Chubby was not creating a one-dog obstacle course in front of me as I walked, which could only mean they must have fed her already, and let her out.  Thankee-sai for small miracles, I muttered, not noticing my unusual choice of words, or recognizing that it was unusual, until later.      

Elizabeth was standing at the stove, making breakfast for the kids. 

“Mornin’,” I said, rusty-voiced.

“Good morning,” she said, turning and smiling.  “Would you like some eggs?”

“No, thanks.” I leaned drowsily against the counter.

“The coffee’s fresh,” she said over her shoulder, having returned her attention to the eggs.

“Thankee-sai,” I said reflexively, pushing leadenly off the counter and crossing the kitchen to where we kept the cups, and the coffee.  “What time did the girls get up?” I asked, pouring myself a cup, and carefully lifting it to the table. 

“Maria wandered out here about a half-hour ago; and you’d have to ask Jess, because she was up watching TV when I got back from the gym.”

“At six o’clock?” I asked, sinking slowly into one of the kitchen chairs. 

“Uh-huh.”  There was disapproval in her tone.

“Well, I guess at least she won’t have trouble adjusting to her schedule when school starts up again.”  It was less than two weeks away from the start of the school year; I was tracking it very closely.

“I guess.”  She sounded doubtful.  “Would you like creamer?”

“Sure.”  When Elizabeth said ‘creamer,’ she was talking about the condensed, exotically-flavored liquid stuff in the fridge.  Normally, I would just mix two teaspoons of sugar and some plain powdered cream in my cup, but that would require getting up again since I had forgotten to do it while I was standing by the coffee maker.  “How’s Maria?  Still sneezing?”  Maria had caught a head cold, with congestion and a runny nose, except that instead of coughing, she would go into these extended sneezing fits.  Then each of us began to have them, although whether it was catching or just the power of suggestion was impossible to say.

“Haven’t heard a thing this morning,” she said, handing me the cold plastic bottle of cinnamon-caramel-vanilla macchiato.

“Thankee-sai,” I said, reaching for it, but she pulled it back quickly.

“Alright, what is that?” 

Jump

There he was, measuring the distance from the top of the big rock to the water below.  Twenty feet?  Twenty-five?  Whatever it was, it was far.  More concerning to him than the drop, though, was the depth of the water.  Ten feet maybe?  Twelve?  He stood there looking down, knowing there was no real way to gauge from above.  How much water do you need?  He wasn’t sure. 

You should just go.  You just saw Angel do it.  His anxiety level, which had been a low persistent buzzing in his body since stepping out of the forested canyon and onto the rocky promontory, jumped a notch in response to this thought.   He was filled with a nervous uncertainty, but he noticed that it lacked a sharp edge of fear, which surprised him. 

Little Mikey explores the swimming hole in 2007.

He’d seen this cliff many times before, but never from the top.  After all, this was his favorite swimming hole in all of Oak Creek, large enough and deep enough to swim in, with a wide, shallow area for the kids to play in.  And then there were the rocks on the far side, the deep side, that seemed like they were designed for jumping into the water.  There were three of them, in perfectly ascending order.  He thought of them as the Three Bears rocks, because one was too little, one was too big, and one was just right.  He’d jumped from the little one and the just right one many times in years past, but never big bear rock.  He’d never even considered jumping from that rock, even on the few occasions he’d seen others do it.  But he was there now, and he thought he might just do it.  He even felt, in some strange way that he knew was unconnected to any sense of masculine pride, an urging, like he was supposed to jump. 

His being there at all was really an accident.  The others set out from camp to go swimming a half-hour before, and so to save time, he took a side path through the forest, guessing it might turn out to be a short cut.  And it was just that, except the near-constant upward tilt of the trail brought him not to the water’s edge, but to the rocky outcropping overlooking the swimming hole.  Right to the top of big bear rock. 

Helpful Hints from the Annual Camper

Although I don’t like to admit it, I am an annual camper.  That means I am one of those people who take their families camping no more often than once each calendar year.  Being an annual camper isn’t the best kind of camper to be.  For one thing, you still have to acquire and maintain all the gear of a regular camper, and find a place to store it, only to drag it out for a few days of use every July. 

Worse, though, is how much the useful knowledge and expertise you gain from one year’s camping trip naturally decomposes over the course of the following eleven months, three weeks, and a couple of days.  For me, the arrival of each trip is met by a disturbing lack of recall.  When I was preparing for our trip this year, for example, I found a short-handled pry bar at the bottom of the box.  I held it up, wondering why last year’s me thought it was such a good idea to have a Wonder Bar (as they are sometimes called; there's a picture of one up top) dedicated just for camping.  It’s a strange feeling, to look at a box full of stuff and know that you’ve seen it all before, but not have a clue why some of it is in there.  Fortunately for this year’s me, I erred on the side of caution and threw it back in.  Turns out that a Wonder Bar is a very useful thing to have around a campsite, for prying wood apart, or pulling nails, and it makes an excellent tool for managing a campfire, which I then remembered was the real reason I had included it.   

Then there’s the disquieting sense of having to rediscover and relearn things you already knew.  Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to stare at a piece of rope and know, I mean absolutely know, that last year you knew how to tie a decent knot, but now, no matter what you try, it always ends up looking like you’ve just tied your shoelaces?    

Starting now, this annual camper is going to begin rectifying this problem by writing down some of the things I tend to forget from year to year.  This way, instead of watching the nylon canopy we put over our picnic table disintegrate in one big burst of flame and then think, “Oh, that’s right.  I’m not supposed to leave the propane on while I go off looking for a lighter,” all I have to do is read over this list next year and be reminded to TURN THE @#$%! PROPANE OFF!!!

Those who camp as infrequently as we do might find some of the following hints useful.  Everyone else, I assume, is reading for laughs.

Sedona, Oak Creek and Cave Springs

Just about every July, my brother-in-law takes his family up north to go camping.  They always go to the same place, the Cave Springs campground in Oak Creek Canyon.  Over the last six years or so (with the notable exception of last year), we have tagged along, at least for a few days each time.  Camping at Cave Springs brings a welcome break from cicada season here in Phoenix, and relief from all the symptoms of summer madness their ceaseless droning represents.    

Oak Creek Canyon is just north of Sedona, that internationally-recognized focal point of new-age flakiness set in the midst of some of the most amazing terrain on earth.  You’ve probably seen pictures of some of the more famous buttes and rock formations and the striking colors they display.  One of the things I like most about camping in Oak Creek is that we pass through red rock country on our way.  There’s nothing quite like the experience of arriving in Sedona’s environs after driving a hundred miles through the flat, washed out, non-descript landscapes of the desert.  It’s always a magical moment, coming around that final bend in the land of tan to see the first richly glowing rust-colored hills emerge in one fluid, constantly expanding vista.  It’s like that classic moment in The Wizard of Oz when the movie goes from black and white to Technicolor, or in the old version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when they first step into the big room in Wonka’s candy wonderland.  It’s also something like an incredible strip-tease performance, only it’s Mother Nature peeling off her beige blouse, and taking off the horned-rim glasses, and unfastening her hair…  

Another few minutes of driving and the surroundings have completely transformed into something strangely wonderful.  It is a realm constructed entirely from enormous red blocks of weather-sculpted sandstone.  The world outside the car has abandoned its standard, bland palette in favor of one that focuses with an artist’s intensity on just three colors:  that signature color of the land itself, which we call red, but which is really an indescribable mix of pinks and reds and oranges and creams, and whose predominant hue seems to change with every elusive morphing of the light; the deep, dark, absorbing green of juniper and pine which cover the hills, stud the slopes of the buttes’ bases, and sprinkle across their tops like chocolate jimmies on a cupcake; and the color of a sky so sweet, so juicy, and so thickly blue that for some reason you can only think of watermelon, and how much you’d like to sink your teeth into it, and let those cool sky-juices run right down the sides of your mouth and drip from the point of your chin, puddling sky-blue at your feet.  Their combined vitality produces an exquisitely interlocking balance, a harmonization to some secret platonic template of beauty. 

It’s no wonder the vortex-worshippers and crystal gazers go ga-ga for it.  I know I feel different when I get there, although I’m not there to align my chakras or get my aura read.  But there is a mental shift that takes place upon arriving in red rock country, and for me it's the moment of release from all the work and stress that comes from getting the hell out of town.  Sedona is my visual confirmation that the escape is real, and now.  In turn, my body instinctively begins to relax, and my high-revving mind downshifts to a slower gear, automatically lowering the frantic spinning of my brain to a smoother, calmer rpm.

Dark Tower: ka and ka-tet

I’m in the middle of something I never thought I’d be doing:  reading Stephen King.  His Dark Tower series, to be specific.  If you had told me a year ago that at this time I’d be knee-deep in Stephen King novels (literally; I stacked them up the other day and they came to my knee cap, and that’s not even including the one that just came out, The Wind Through the Keyhole), I’d have said that you’re fruitier than a box of Harry and David Royal Riviera pears, nuttier than the pecan pancakes at Cracker Barrel.  But here I am, some 2,000 pages in, and there’s no turning back now.  In the world of the Dark Tower, there’s a word for such a thing: ka.

The basic story follows the quest of one man, Roland Deschain, who is seeking this mysterious and foreboding Dark Tower.  In the beginning, and for a long time after, we don’t know what the Dark Tower is (a place? a thing? Donald Trump’s office?), nor do we know why Roland is so anxious to find it.  What is clear is that he will stop at nothing, and will allow nothing to get in the way of achieving his goal.  It’s a lot like Moby Dick, except Melville doesn’t make you wait until page 200 to give you the first clue about why Ahab is maniacally pursuing this certain white whale.    

At any rate, in Roland’s world they have this thing called ka.  It’s like fate, or destiny, or The Force, or the will of the universe, or God, or Stephen King’s bank account, or something, and it plays a part in everything that happens to Roland.  Just like in our world, some people believe in it, and many people don’t.  Roland accepts the existence of ka, and even though it imposes great tragedy and suffering on him, he relies on it to know that it can lead him to this Dark Tower, where he must…do something.  I still don’t know; I’m only just starting the fifth book in the series right now, The Wolves of the Calla (and by starting, I mean I’m on page 175 of 900 or so).  There are two more volumes after this, and so far each book has been longer than the one before.  It’s like one of those hallways in your dreams that just keeps stretching longer and longer, and the more you run, the farther away the end of the hallway gets; which, now that I think about it, is a very fitting, King-like metaphor (I keep thinking of that scene in The Shining).

Missing Andy

It’s an interesting feature of human nature that, too often, it takes a person’s death to get us to fully comprehend the importance of that person to us.  You would think that after going through the process a few times, we wouldn’t keep falling for the same old prank, but we do.  It’s like we’re Charlie Brown.  We see Lucy holding that football, and we want to believe that she will let us kick it, even though we know, based on past experience, that it’s wrong to believe it.  So we go through our whole routine, and, well, you know what happens.  And then, as we’re lying on our backs with little Woodstocks circling our heads, we are confronted once again by the thing we somehow keep forgetting.  It’s not Lucy that suckers us into doing this every time; we sucker ourselves.  And the worst part is, even though we know it now, we also know that we will forget it again, probably right before the next time we come around a corner to see Lucy, holding an innocent-looking football and grinning sadistically…

In other words, it would be nice if we could fully esteem someone while they’re still around, when both we and they could reap the rewards of our heightened sense of appreciation.  But unless someone gives us clear and unmistakable advance notice of their imminent passing, there’s no real sense of urgency driving us to a full scale assessment.  It’s simply not the kind of thing that needs to get done today, like getting to the grocery store for milk, or washing the kids’ school clothes.  Our minds cling to the illusion of permanence, and we keep our daily stores based on the erroneous belief that things don’t change much from day to day.  I don’t know if there’s a whole lot we can do about that.  It’s seems to be the way we’re made.  Death just has a funny way of refuting that particular belief.  It also has a funny way of focusing our attention. 

These somber, perhaps even macabre, reflections come in response to the news of Andy Griffith’s death last week.  Strange that the passing of a TV sitcom actor would be the catalyst for such introspective spelunking, but there it is. 

Like millions of others, when I think of Andy Griffith, I think of The Andy Griffith Show.  And when I think of The Andy Griffith Show, I think of two things: the classic sitcom itself, and Griffith’s character at the center of it all, Sheriff Andy Taylor.

For my generation, The Andy Griffith Show is part of that great triumvirate of classic television sitcoms, along with I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Growing up in Phoenix, then-independent Channel 5 was the station that carried those shows, always clustered together like a prized, three-piece collection of rare Tiffany glass.  As I remember it, the classic order was The Dick Van Dyke Show at noon, followed by The Andy Griffith Show at 12:30, and I Love Lucy at 1:00.  There was a fourth (mostly Hogan’s Heroes, although other shows would sometimes supplant it for short stretches) that bridged the gap until Donohue started at 2:00. 

Throughout the seventies and eighties, no matter where you lived in this great land of ours, you probably had a Channel 5, and that station probably played the same trifecta of sitcom greats at least once every weekday on what appeared to be direct orders from God. 

Guest Post: Kent Yoder

Today marks another first for thunderstrokes:  the first guest post.  It comes courtesy of Kent Yoder, a friend and fellow blogger.

Kent and I came to know each other through our mutual friends, Rick and Karri.  Over the years, we would connect at the occasional get-together, and, of course, Rick and Karri’s seminal white elephant party at Christmastime.  I always appreciated Kent’s quick comebacks, sarcastic asides, and obscure references (three of my favorite pastimes); and as a result, we formed a kind of friendship by association, a friendship once removed, you might say.  For a short while, we actually worked together at the post office, and it was during that time that I developed an appreciation for Kent’s honesty and dedication, and learned that his sharp, dry wit wasn’t just something he saved for parties.

Last year, Kent was unexpectedly diagnosed with prostate cancer (really, is there any other way to be diagnosed?).  Over the last twelve months the disease, and its treatment, have taken a serious toll on him physically.  Seeing him, especially as infrequently as I do, is to be surprised all over again by the constant and relentless siege he is enduring.  He seems to exist within an increasingly narrow range of the physical spectrum, between manageable discomfort on the good side, and unalleviated pain on the bad.  Despite this, his positive attitude, sense of humor, and a certain, not wholly definable form of good-natured nonchalance - or is it humility? I can’t quite put my finger on it - continue to throw out sparks from under the inconceivable weight of fatigue and suffering.

Floating Lessons

I watched Maria struggle with learning to float on her back in our local public pool.  It was her second week of swim lessons.  The instructor had his hand underneath her, holding her up, and he was encouraging her to relax, and spread her arms and legs out. He was there, he told her soothingly, and nothing bad could happen.  Maria’s arms were flailing and slapping the water, and her rigid legs were sticking out of the water like two arrows shot from the same bow. 

This was actually progress.  She had spent almost all of the first week clinging to the side of the pool and wailing.  And last year’s lessons, when she was two, were a study in a small-scale disaster.  We were in the pool together for those classes, and she had absolutely no interest in anything but the bucket of pool toys the instructor brought with her.  Every day we tried, and failed, to practice blowing bubbles, dunking, and doing “big arms.”  Leg-kicking was the only area where she would make any effort at all, in short spurts, and only because we shamelessly dangled toys like carrots as a reward.  Her stubborn tendencies were on full display, as were mine, and many days our lesson ended early.  Sometimes very early. 

This year we decided to put her into the first level of real swim lessons straight away.  No toys, no holding onto Daddy, no getting out early.  Thus, the initial clinging and wailing.  

It might sound harsh, but we desert dwellers take the ability to swim seriously.  We have to.  In Phoenix, every other house has a pool, and for a long time we led the nation in child drownings and near-drownings every year.  When you live here, swimming isn’t a luxury; it’s a survival skill.  So, watching her struggle with putting her face in the water, or floating, while difficult, was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.